1. Field
Some example embodiments may relate to walking assistance devices that assists a user in walking and/or methods of controlling the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Research has been actively conducted into assistive robots that augment human actions. Assistive robots may be used for various purposes in such fields as military, industry, rehabilitation, and/or welfare.
Particularly, walking assistance devices have been developed and/or used for physical therapy or rehabilitation training. The walking assistance device may be a device to assist a user in walking by operating a walking assistance unit.
In addition, with the rise of the elderly population, the walking assistance device may be increasingly used not only for physical therapy and rehabilitation training, but also to assist the old whose muscular strength is weakened or to increase physical strength.
In general, wearable robots to assist muscular strength may include a lower extremity muscular strength assistance robot for behavior of lower extremities. Among these wearable robots, the lower extremity muscular strength assistance robot denotes a robot serving to assist force of wearer's legs to assist walking using human-robot synchronization.
Such a lower extremity muscular strength assistance robot may be driven so as to sense a wearer's intention to walk and to assist corresponding muscular strength. Here, sensing of the wearer's intention to walk may mean sensing of a wearer's intention to start walk or to finish walk, or mean sensing of moving states of the left foot and the right foot.
Although some example embodiments will be described with relation to wearable robots for humans and control methods thereof, those skilled in the art will appreciate that some example embodiments may be applied to other types of robots, systems, and control methods, such as wearable robots for animals and control methods thereof, or more general purpose systems and control methods.